


Follow Through

by bluestalking



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 16:36:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5463548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluestalking/pseuds/bluestalking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about Agatha, whose <i>Carry On</i> isn't Simon, and Penny, who lets her breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Follow Through

**Author's Note:**

  * For [randomizer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomizer/gifts).



**_Wren_ **

She reads _Carry On, Simon_ all the way to the end. Of course she does. Just because she wants space to become someone, to be more than half a person, that doesn’t mean she’s stopped caring about everything she had before. But everything is always so difficult with Cath, when things are going in a way that’s not hers. Everything you say or do is you, being too dramatic, being mean, being shallow, being selfish, being hurtful, being _stupid_. Cath can, honest to goodness, be the best, brightest, most blessed human being in the world. 

Wren loves her so much that her heart cramps. But sometimes, sometimes Wren wants to breathe without it hurting. She wants to finish her thoughts and her paragraphs without anyone cutting her off halfway to blurt out fifteen changes and new ideas which are locked in place before Wren has even agreed to them. 

Cath’s mind is going, constantly. It’s the best thing about her. But she never likes to stop and wait, not for anyone, not even for Wren. Sometimes--Cath doesn’t get this--sometimes all the gentle nudging and sidling up to it and being straightforward doesn’t slow Cath down. To get Cath to back off even a little, Wren has learned, you have to go all the way, all at once. 

Cath couldn’t let her sleep in another _room_ without freaking out on her. 

So, fine. If Cath couldn’t give her a little space, Wren was happy to give her _all_ the space. Let Cath figure out how to be her own human for awhile. Let her stop making Wren feel guilty for living.

But Wren still read the fic.

She read it, and with every chapter she thought _fine, fine, FINE!_ louder and louder until all the love in her heart twisted and burned. She knew, she knew and she couldn’t stop knowing, that Agatha was _her._

Agatha was Wren.

How can you not be hurt when cool, beautiful, generous, anxious, funny, normalcy-craving Agatha turns out nasty and fearful and _wrong_ in your sister’s story? How do you not feel hurt when (she used to say Agatha was Wren, they used to say that Cath was the Penny and Wren was the Agatha when they played) the person you are leaves, just like you, but because she’s shallow and weak and bad?

In Cath’s story, Agatha wasn’t kissing Baz, but she left Simon behind because she liked clothes and ponies and Normals better than her best friends. She hated magic and fun and all she dreamed of was a life like the cover of a summer beach read, dispassionate lipstick pout under a wide-brimmed hat, smooth legs stretched out over white sand. Ennui and salt water and unfaithful husbands, that was the kind of pose Cath’s Agatha would be striking, forever and forever. 

And then Cath made Agatha run away.

That was the unforgivable thing. Cath made--all right, a few choices Wren would have fought her over, if they’d been writing together. But the very worst thing was making Agatha run away from her best friends in the world. That was how Wren knew that all of it, all of the empty Agatha who didn’t love enough, was her.

Of course Cath knew about romance now, and Cath the Writer knew all about magic, and Cath knew about loyalty (with how she talked about their dad, she was the one who was loyal?). And Wren was the dumb, prissy, girly traitor who ran away. It made Wren ready to explode.

So she didn’t try to make it nice, explaining about needing space and room to grow, and she overstated how not into the books she was now. She didn’t explain that Cath talks over people sometimes, how even if she doesn’t mean to, she sometimes makes it sound like everyone but her is stupid or broken. 

She didn’t say that sometimes, the way Cath writes about (talks about) (acts around) queer people makes her uncomfortable. She didn’t explain how long it’s taken her to understand exactly what the discomfort is, for Wren herself. She didn’t say, what you’re getting wrong is _me_. 

She settles for getting right under Cath’s skin and walking away when she needs to walk away. And she goes home. 

And she writes.

**_Agatha_ **

Penny has always been the one who turns the tap off.

Agatha Wellbelove tries not to look like the kind of person who cares how she looks from the outside. The Wellbeloves are the kind of family where a) you ought to care about appearances immensely but b) you oughtn’t need to try to look good. When Agatha goes to Watford for her first year, she’s skinny and tongue-tied and she should have braces but she doesn’t. She refuses to get them. She’ll grow into her teeth, her mother says helplessly and inaccurately, when nothing will make Agatha budge.

These are not the worst problems to have. They’re barely problems at all. Agatha feels, before she gets to school and for quite awhile after (forever after, once in a while) like she’s floating underwater with her mouth puffed closed and her eyes wide open, blinded by the cloud of her hair, the current stopping up her ears and making her whole skin tingle until she can’t feel anything else the right way.

Agatha’s cool, because she has money and horses and loves to dance and do sports and has very nice hair and actually does pull off being unafraid of anything fairly well. She talks to some people often enough that they feel gratified by her attention. She rises up as she needs to, to freshen the good feelings between them, and then she sinks back into the water and lets her skin go numb once more.

Penny is the person that turns the tap off.

It’s odd. For a while, Agatha really loved Simon. Not because he was THE MAGE’S HEIR, because she got a sick feeling in her stomach about the way the Mage divided people up with his words, and she didn’t even then really think a school headmaster ought to like one student so much better than everyone else, or spend all his time and energy on building a militia instead of fixing the girls’ loo in the West Wing or hiring someone to take over the Foreign Languages department. 

(If Agatha wanted to learn any magic, it would have been magic in French. Or, in any language where what you’re doing isn’t able work in English, but mostly, French. It feels good on Agatha’s tongue. Her Year 8 project would have been in French if she’d ever been taught enough to start on.)

Anyway. Penny isn’t like anyone else Agatha has ever been friends with. She’s blunt, bossy, and has barely any personal boundaries. She could take over the world of Mages with her brain alone. When Agatha was eleven, this combination could have been enough to make them dire enemies. But Penny turned up in one of Agatha’s classes and said--actually, Agatha can’t remember what Penny said. _But_ , whatever she said might as well have been, _I live in a water bubble, too, and I love horses and dancing and not having to be pretty all the time. I can’t always feel_ my _skin, either._ She might as well have said it in French.

Agatha doesn’t need to remember the actual words, just that when Penny spoke to her, that wet, echoing bubble of a feeling instantly evaporated. A few seconds of chatter and Agatha was dry and normal and standing on the ground with both of her feet. She could breathe in and out and touch things like they were real. She felt _filled up._

On the day they first spoke, Penny had bright red hair, and it looked brave. It didn’t matter that the hair was an accident. She’d done the thing that caused the accident. Penny was brave. She spoke, and _all_ her words were spells, bringing Agatha’s world and Penny’s in line with each other, and where they lined up was a beautiful, easy place to be. Being in line with Penny’s world smelled like cedar and dust and snow on the other side of the door. Technically, Simon was the most magical person Agatha had ever met. But it was Penny’s magic that made her feel like magic was worth anything at all.

Agatha did love Simon. She loved him for awhile. It was nice to knock her knuckles against Simon’s and walk side by side like they were on the same side in the world, and share kisses (odd, but all right) and jokes (usually bad) with him. She didn’t mind too much that he was always running off to do battle, until she realized that she _did_ mind somewhat. Once she realized that she minded _somewhat_ , the minding got worse and worse, especially when it hit her just what position she was in.

She wasn’t supposed to mind. She was supposed to be the brave and stoic girlfriend of a hero. She was supposed to bear it all...and she didn’t want to. Which meant that she was the girl who would someday dump the boy who was trying to save the World of Mages. Simon Snow stood bravely in the face of danger, Simon Snow clung to normalcy as he gasped into the oncoming storm of a monster no one understood. Agatha was the normalcy that Simon Snow clung to. 

She minded that so much it surged inside her. She didn’t want to be anyone’s anchor. 

~

Here is the thing about Penny: when everything was going badly for everyone, that last year leading up to summer they defeated the Mage--the horrible realization that he’d been the Humdrum always, and the battle Agatha still had the scar from--Penny knew Agatha’s secrets. Penny took everything on Simon’s plate (the things that Agatha should have carried) and Penny stood by him and Penny fought along with him. And then, with all her loyalty and love for Simon intact, she still made room for Agatha’s frightened, pulling-away secrets, and she kept every single one of them safe.

For one: Agatha didn’t want to date Simon Snow.

 

When Simon thought he saw Agatha snogging Baz, it was already too late for him to be jealous. Agatha could tell, in those few seconds, that Simon was jealous and that he thought she was snogging Baz. She knew because he said, very loudly, “GET YOUR HANDS OFF HIM!” which Agatha had time to realize was an odd thing to say before the awful dragging sucking feeling of the Humdrum’s unmagic fell on them like some kind of giant squid. (Better than a merwolf, she told herself. Better than a merwolf! But it wasn’t.)

And then they were gone. Simon and Penny were gone. She’d just seen Penny’s face, startled and then taut, that brief look at Agatha which said she was Agatha’s friend and the maybe-snogging-Baz thing had fallen out of her interests the second there was anything else to think about. Perfect, perfect Penny. Gone. Agatha and Baz gawking into nothing.

Both of them knew it was something terrible that had just happened, and both of them knew it wasn’t exactly right that Simon had wanted Baz let go instead of Agatha. But that part hurt surprisingly little, except that Simon could think she would do that. And it was already too late for them, the two of them together, before that moment in the wood gave Simon his out.

But she hadn’t wanted Simon for ages. She was just afraid of trying to leave. Penny had said, in early spring, “I haven’t seen you much since Christmas,” in a sideways, questing way. And Agatha said, “It isn’t you, I’m hiding from Simon.” They’d had Christmas together and Agatha’s family kept waiting for signs it was getting more serious, and Simon kept holding her hand like he was about to stick a ring on it, and Agatha had never felt more terrified.

Once Penny pushed--and she always pushed just the right way--it came out, the feeling stuck, and the feeling hollow in her arms, the feeling that she wasn’t allowed to leave and that staying was terrible of her. The fact that she was expected exactly where she was, and she was afraid to break it off. 

At first Penny did get angry about that, said that just because Simon was powerful didn’t mean he was a bad person who’d attack Agatha for leaving. But she stopped almost at once and thought over it backwards and said she was sorry, because Simon _couldn’t_ control himself and it wasn’t fair to be told you could never, ever leave a person, because the person you wanted to leave was important, and your whole job was to make things better for him, and how dare you be so selfish as to threaten that person’s important happiness and mental stability?

“But you’ve got to do it sometime, if you feel that way,” Penny said.

Agatha said she would. And she planned to. For months, she planned to. She’d really worked up to it, just before the moment in the woods, when the humdrum took Penny and Simon. She’d meant to do it--maybe not that day, but that week. Sometime. Probably that week.

But she hadn’t wanted to be with him for ages, and Penny knew.

The second secret Penny kept, which Agatha knew for longer but less clearly, was that something was off in how she thought about Simon. Even when she thought Simon was a good catch for her, there was this other, elsewhere thing. And it wasn’t any other boy that she liked, who was distracting her. It was that certain bright, bubbling, wonderful feelings never happened around boys at all. She thought of them as friendship, and maybe (she realized so, so slowly) friendship wasn’t what those feelings were. 

That was why, when Simon saw her with Baz, it was so, so stupid. Everything about being with Simon was like ticking off boxes--handsome, powerful, popular, interesting people making a perfect relationship. Look at how their hands slide into one another’s! Look at their smiles! Isn’t it cute, how they kiss so sweetly but never get all over each other the way some people do? 

It didn’t occur to her for so long that determining to be really attracted to him was a tickbox as well. _All right,_ she had been telling herself. _I like him. I can be in love with him, too. I can want to be with him, because that’s how it is, isn’t it? Here I go, feeling the attraction._

“I feel like I’ve got to be in love him,” she’d told Penny, when she admitted she wanted to split up. “We’re perfect together.”

“If you were perfect together you would be in love. You wouldn’t want to end it,” Penny said reasonably. “Anyway, no one told you to go be perfect together. That’s just something you’ve built up in your own head. Do you even know what you feel about it?”

_But no one told you to do that._ It stuck in Agatha’s head, and the whole thing cracked around her. She cared, of course she cared, but she _couldn’t be that._

“We’re so _right,”_ she said, aggrieved. 

Penny just said, in a long, bossy, sage-y sigh, “You shouldn’t stay with him if you don’t want to be with him. You shouldn’t be with anyone, if that’s how it makes you feel.”

Which was true.

The third thing Penny knew was that Agatha, while she was mentally giving up loyalty and boys and basically smashing her life to pieces, went all the way and realized that she _didn’t want magic._

It was a rough year, year seven. And the parts that were roughest for Agatha were only in Agatha’s head, most of the time. How could she bring these things up when she barely understood them herself, and the world felt every second like it was on the edge of collapse? Everyone else had an apocalypse to cope with, and she just wanted to settle down in a bungalow and see a nice girl.

But, tongue thick with guilt, she said it to Penny one day. She said, while they were walking on their own, “Honest to God, Penny, if I could do anything with my magic, I’d get rid of it.” It wasn’t supposed to come out, and she was so frightened that even with Penny right there the water feeling bubbled up around her and burned. 

“Then you should do that,” Penny said coolly, and Agatha thought it was a snub, exactly the snub she expected. She thought so long enough to go fizzy and angry, and then she realized that Penny meant it. Magic was the world to Penny, and Agatha said she wanted out (no one, no one ever wanted out), and Penny told her she could.

That was something about Penny that was simply extraordinary. That was the kind of thing that made Agatha wonder what Penny got out of being friends with _her._ Penny could be the most stubborn, opinionated know-it-all in the world, and still give just where Agatha needed it.

~

Simon and Agatha had half a talk over the summer, but it was dismal to dump someone after an ultimate battle. Especially an ultimate battle where your dead mum shows up, and it turns out the Humdrum has been the Mage all along, and you haven’t had a decent night of sleep in three weeks. Agatha didn’t want to be the minor villain that punched Simon while he was down. But they had a few chats where the topic was halfway broached. They all ended with Simon being short with her about something she didn’t do.

When she finally called him up and did it, it was fresh after a talk with Penny. Penny’s voice was still ringing fresh in her head, saying, _Honestly, you want these things, Agatha. If you want them, you have to do them. You can’t just float along forever, and you can’t drag Simon with you. You have to stop being a drag on one another._

So Agatha called him up, and she said, “You’re lovely, Simon, but I don’t like that you thought I cheated on you with Baz, and now that there’s no more Humdrum to worry about, I think we’d better all start Year Eight clean. We’re not good for each other romantically. You ought to date your roommate, if you like him that way. I don’t want to date anymore, either way. I’m breaking up with you now. Sorry, Simon.”

She wrote it out on a card ahead of time, actually, scribbled it between one call and the other. She barely let Simon answer, which made her feel a little foolish, but he made enough of a noise that she knew he understood her. She hung up on him, and shut herself in her bedroom to start working on her spell.

~

Here was the secret that she almost didn’t tell Penny: once she realized that Simon wasn’t it for her, she thought Penny might be. It was just a little tickle at the back of her mind, a restless sense that Penny was perfect, a restless sense that finding Penny to be perfect had always had more than one layer to it. She told Penny eventually, after they left Watford, and it was okay. Penny liked her fellow in America, still, and only her fellow in America. Agatha knew it, and she wasn’t that disappointed. What mattered was that Agatha didn’t want to talk about it. She just wanted to know it out loud. And Penny didn’t tell anyone before Agatha said it herself.

~

Agatha’s spell was **WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE**. She handed it in and her teachers looked horrified. 

“We can’t pass you with this,” said Penny’s mother, which was how Agatha knew Penny hadn’t whispered a word of this, either. “This isn’t a spell that should exist.”

“Oh,” said Agatha. “Well, it does. I made it.”

“You haven’t tested it, surely.”

“I thought I might just try it now,” Agatha said.

“No, no, no!” her teachers squawked, and she was sent out and given two weeks to come up with something, anything else. It’s a very unusual allowance, they told her. They wouldn’t normally do it. She’s always been so promising. They would hate a moment of foolishness jeopardize her entire future. She’s such a lovely girl, she always has been such a lovely girl.

Agatha thought of what she would do if she was Penny. Of course, one of the things she loves about Penny is that they aren’t the same at all. She’s never known what Penny would say. So when they refused her spell, she went to Penny and asked. 

“They wouldn’t take it,” she said. “They told me I was being stupid and throwing my life away. They think it’s disgusting.”

“Well, I wouldn’t do it,” Penny said. “But I’m not you, and you are.”

“Should I come up with something else?” Agatha asked.

“What for?” said Penny.

“To...pass,” Agatha said. “To pass?”

“But what _for?_ ” Penny said. “You can transfer to finish school, if you want to. Or you if you think you can do up another spell in two weeks, you _could_ do that. But what’s a certificate from Watford going to do for you, if you’re going to use the spell afterwards? Anyway, you might pass just by doing the spell correctly. How are your marks in your classes just now?”

“Huh,” said Agatha. “They’re good.”

“Technically,” said Penny, “I don’t think they can fail you for a spell that works.”

“ _Huh,”_ said Agatha. “Wait--Penny. I mean it, tell me. Will you hate me if it works?”

Penny, in the perfect way that Penny has, actually thought about it first. She didn’t just say, _No, no, no, not a problem at all, I’ll love you forever, Agatha, and I’ll give you away at your wedding, even. Weddings are still wonderful when you’re not bound to your spouse in five dimensions._

Finally Penny said, “You know, as much as I love to have you around, Agatha, I don’t love it when you spend years moping around doing things you hate because you think that you’re supposed to.”

Agatha, to give it its fair due, thought before she answered as well.

“Will you want me to hang around you when I don’t even have magic? I’m a bit of a drag even when we have that in common. I know I am, I’m sorry.” She hung on the answer.

Penny looked affronted. “You’re one of my best friends in the world, so I hope I’d want to see you,” she said. “You just don’t notice the good things you do for me. Now, you’ve got your answer. Stop fussing.”

Simon was horrified. Baz was bemused. But Agatha began breathing air. Agatha could taste the sky. And when she walked out of that building, her skin felt everything. She felt everything, and Penny was waiting with a smile on her face.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“Perfectly,” Agatha said. “I cast it perfectly.”

She almost--there was a hint, a moment of a hint, of panic, of thinking that she’d cast a spell she made for herself perfectly, and it was incredible, and could she please do that again and again? But she couldn’t do it again, she could never do it again, it had been ripped off her like a bandaid, and there was no magic in her anymore. What had she _done?_

Then air filled her lungs and a warm, clean peace flooded through her. This was exactly what she wanted. She didn’t want more. The exhilaration of what she’d done was enough, enough, even too much. She felt like she might explode.

Then, “Of course you did,” Penny said with a considering nod. Her voice put Agatha’s feet on the ground. Her voice and her smell, and the odd sideways smile that still makes Agatha feel as if she’s home.

“Time to be good at something else, I guess,” Agatha said.

“Hm,” Penny said, because she wasn’t worried about it. Warm wood and sunshine. Agatha slowly, slowly stretched out, and breathed, and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Picking out where to start with a _Carry On_ fic turns out to be kind of tricky. Who's telling the story? Are the characters in Simon Snow real people, or are they invented by the characters in _Fangirl_? For better or worse I stuck on the idea that _Carry On_ is Cath's fanfic, and when I thought about that the way Agatha gets written makes a lot of sense--this desperately important person is suddenly not that great. She cares about superficial stuff and runs away from Simon and the "real issues" at the last minute. And Penny never forgives her.
> 
> But if this is Cath's version of the story, it means that it's not the _only_ version. I liked the idea that even while they weren't really talking, Wren was reading her sister's work. I think if she did, she'd see herself in Cath's Agatha. I liked the idea that she hasn't completely thrown away her love of the books or of writing, and she can still make up a new pseudonym and post her feelings for the world to see, incognito. She definitely grabs a few ideas from Cath and runs with them in a defiant direction.
> 
> I also like the idea that Agatha can be someone's most important character, and that Penny can be hers. Baz and Simon, fine fine fine. Let's talk about these girls instead.
> 
> I hope I haven't strayed too far from what you were hoping for. They're the loveliest characters and I'm so happy I got to write about them. <3


End file.
